Palo Alto's Story - Zuk left Juniper in February of 2005 to start Palo Alto and develop a next generation security switch. Palo Alto's website identifies Zuk as Palo Alto's "Founder and CTO" and a member of its Board of Directors and Mao as Palo Alto's "Founder and Chief Architect." By 2006, May and Zuk had left Juniper to start Palo Alto, which would compete with Juniper in providing firewall technologies. NetScreen's intellectual property rights were included as a part of this acquisition. Juniper's Story - Palo Alto Networks was founded by several former high-level employees of Juniper, including Nir Zuk and Yuming Mao, who first came to Juniper via its acquisition of Netscreen, a manufacturer of high-end network security devices, for $4 billion in April of 2004. Some facts are in dispute and we will go over the two versions of Palo Alto's story, but what's undisputed is that the company was founded by ex-Juniper employees who are also the named inventors of the asserted patents. Other than the high stakes for investors, particularly those in Palo Alto, what makes this case so interesting is not so much the patents or technology at issue, but their inventors. The final seven asserted patents remaining in the case include:Ĩ,077,723 - (Nir Zuk, Yuming Mao) Packet processing in a multiple processor system ħ,779,459 - (Yuming Mao et al.) - Method and apparatus for implementing a layer 3/layer 7 firewall in an L2 device ħ,650,634 - (Nir Zuk) - Intelligent integrated network security device ħ,302,700 - (Yuming Mao et al.) - Method and apparatus for implementing a layer 3/layer 7 firewall in an L2 device Ħ,772,347 - (Ken Xie, Yan Ke, Yuming Mao) - Method, apparatus and computer program product for a network firewall ħ,734,752 - (Nir Zuk, Yuming Mao, Kowsik Guruswamy) - Intelligent integrated network security device for high-availability applications ħ,107,612 - (Ken Xie, Yan Ke, Yuming Mao) - Method, apparatus and computer program product for a network firewall.
After filing its initial complaint, Juniper subsequently amended its Complaint on Septemand added two more patents and dropped one.
The case is ongoing and - critically for investors - there is a very important hearing in the case scheduled for November 15, 2013.īefore we discuss the hearing in greater detail, it is important to provide a fuller picture of the case background.
In its complaint, Juniper asserted six patents relating to firewall technology against almost the entire line of Palo Alto's hardware products: PA-5000 (depicted), PA-4000 and PA-2000 Series Firewalls, PA-500 Firewall and PA-200 Firewall. Such success, however, was not overlooked by Palo Alto's major competitor - Juniper Networks ( NYSE: JNPR) - which decided to spoil the party prior to Palo Alto's IPO by filing a patent infringement complaint on Decemin the United States District Court for the District of Delaware, which is a popular forum for patent infringement cases. Palo Alto's market cap has reached as high as $5.3B, and the company has enjoyed a favorable balance sheet on the success of its commercial offerings. Since launching its first firewall product in 2007, the company has enjoyed tremendous success, culminating in its Jinitial public offering. For non-techies out there, their unique firewall controls what traffic is or is not allowed on a network by deploying policies to deny unwanted applications, while allowing specific applications or functions through, regardless of their location, device or what port they are trying to access.
The idea behind the founding of Palo Alto Networks ( NASDAQ: PANW) in 2005 was a simple one - the creation of a next generation firewall product capable of securing a customer's network that is not based on port traffic classification, but rather on application identification, regardless of port, protocol or SSL.